Recap: Boy's And Girls Hockey Games

Boys, Girls Both Split Two Game Series

By: Maggie Cross, Mattia Laudi, and Emily Laurenzi

This past weekend NSA’s Varsity boy’s team traveled to Massachusetts for two games against the New England Stars hoping to pull out two more wins.

NSA gathers around the net for a cheer

It happened to be NSA’s fourth time facing off against the New England Stars. “Coach Simmons told us we needed to play our game, Erik Hallin said,  “And watch their cross ice passes.”  Their record against the Stars was 2-0-1 entering the fourth game.

Approaching the game undefeated, NSA had capitalized on the Stars bad game and pulled out a 7-0 win. “We played very well,” said Erik Hallin “The Stars aren’t bad, they just didn’t play well.”

After the first period the score was only 1-0. Three minutes and six seconds into the second period Patrick Hayes scored on the power play.

NSA’s second goal then led to three more, making the score 5-0 by the end of the second. The Stars became frustrated and began taking multiple penalties giving NSA fourteen power plays through out the game.

In the second game of the weekend, after a briliant win against the New England Stars in the first game, the National Sports Academy struggles against its opponent for 5-4.

This is the second loss of the season for the team of Lake Placid, that keeps leading the North Eastern Division with 35 points.

NSA Mountaineers starts really strong the first period with Erik Halin that lights the lamp after 1 minute assisted by Watts and Desnoyers.

The second half of the period becomes really tough for the Mountaineers that give up three goals in 4 minutes, with two powerplays well exploited by the Stars, and see their advantage become a disadvantage.

After 5 minutes of the second period the score is 4-1 for New England, but two goals scored by Kleinhenz and Dymock, when the clock was set on the last minutes of the intermissimon, give the mountaineers hope for the comeback.

The third period remains stalled until the last 6 minutes of game when Widenmaier nets the goal that ties the game. Unfortunately a carelessness in the defensive zone allows the Stars to score the last point of the game, and conclude the weekend with a W.



Girls Hockey

This past Sunday and Monday if you were behind the NSA girls hockey bench you would have heard a lot of heavy breathing and seen even more dripping sweat. With only two lines of offense and three defensemen, the NSA girls hockey team headed to Norwich University to play a two game series against Stanstead College.

The first game the girls caught a break when recruit, Kaliegh Finigan, agreed to sport the red, white and blue. With her addition there was now seven offense, but still a mere three defense. 

Girls receive encouragement from coaches Bill Ward and Kelli Vossler 

NSA's Carina Randazzo scored her first goal as a Mountaineer to give the girls the critical lead. Stanstead was quick to answer slipping one past the goaltender, Lenka Craigova, to even the score. Denisa Krizova was the next to light the lamp, scoring to give NSA a 2-1 lead. Not about to lay down and quit Stanstead battled hard to tie the game up with a score of 2-2. It was Emily Laurenzi, Penn State's first recruit for their new program, to snipe the winning goal for National Sports Academy. 

Come the second game the NSA girls were tired, or so it appeared. Coach Ward described the teams play in the first period as "slow motion" due to the "lazy excuse" that they were tired. Stanstead took an early lead and NSA was never able to recover. With goals by Denisa Krizova and Megan Whiddon, the end result was 3-2 in favor of Stanstead. 

While the weekend was "tiring" and "mediocre" according to offense men Kelsey Lynch, the girls look forward to the town rivalry game taking place on Thursday and Thanksgiving Break which starts the following day.